over onct more after he was dead.  ’Twas the only tune Whittier ever slipped up, an’ ’tweren’t fair.  I whaled Dan good when he brought that piece back from school.  You don’t know no better, o’ course; but I’ve give you the facts, hereafter an’ evermore to be remembered.  Ben Ireson weren’t no sech kind o’ man as Whittier makes aout; my father he knew him well, before an’ after that business, an’ you beware o’ hasty jedgments, young feller.  Next!”

Harvey had never heard Disko talk so long, and collapsed with burning cheeks; but, as Dan said promptly, a boy could only learn what he was taught at school, and life was too short to keep track of every lie along the coast.

Then Manuel touched the jangling, jarring little machette to a queer tune, and sang something in Portuguese about “Nina, innocente!” ending with a full-handed sweep that brought the song up with a jerk.  Then Disko obliged with his second song, to an old-fashioned creaky tune, and all joined in the chorus.  This is one stanza: 

    “Now Aprile is over and melted the snow,
    And outer Noo Bedford we shortly must tow;
    Yes, out o’ Noo Bedford we shortly must clear,
    We’re the whalers that never see wheat in the ear.”

Here the fiddle went very softly for a while by itself, and then: 

    “Wheat-in-the-ear, my true-love’s posy blowin,
    Wheat-in-the-ear, we’re goin’ off to sea;
    Wheat-in-the-ear, I left you fit for sowin,
    When I come back a loaf o’ bread you’ll be!”

That made Harvey almost weep, though he could not tell why.  But it was much worse when the cook dropped the potatoes and held out his hands for the fiddle.  Still leaning against the locker door, he struck into a tune that was like something very bad but sure to happen whatever you did.  After a little he sang, in an unknown tongue, his big chin down on the fiddle-tail, his white eyeballs glaring in the lamplight.  Harvey swung out of his bunk to hear better; and amid the straining of the timbers and the wash of the waters the tune crooned and moaned on, like lee surf in a blind fog, till it ended with a wail.

“Jimmy Christmas!  Thet gives me the blue creevles,” said Dan.  “What in thunder is it?”

“The song of Fin McCoul,” said the cook, “when he wass going to Norway.”  His English was not thick, but all clear-cut, as though it came from a phonograph.

“Faith, I’ve been to Norway, but I didn’t make that unwholesim noise.  ’Tis like some of the old songs, though,” said Long Jack, sighing.

“Don’t let’s hev another ‘thout somethin’ between,” said Dan; and the accordion struck up a rattling, catchy tune that ended: 

    “It’s six an’ twenty Sundays sence las’ we saw the land,
    With fifteen hunder quintal,
    An’ fifteen hunder quintal,
    ‘Teen hunder toppin’ quintal,
    ‘Twix’ old ‘Queereau an’ Grand!”

“Hold on!” roared Tom Platt.  “D’ye want to nail the trip, Dan?  That’s Jonah sure, ’less you sing it after all our salt’s wet.”